Communication Studies

Undergraduates will see a recognized face in a new role with Amy Arias taking over student advising duties along with Saralinda Kiser.

Gwen Hullman has taken a new job opportunity in Ohio, and in her place, Dr. Sandy Ott from Basque Studies has been appointed interim Department Chair for this academic year. You can read more about Dr. Ott here: https://basque.unr.edu/academics-people-ott.html

The Department of Communication Studies welcomes Assistant Professor Jenna N. Hanchey, who comes to us from finishing her Ph.D. at the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Hanchey studies the politics of international aid and assistance, focusing primarily on organizations that work in and with Sub-Saharan African communities. Her work draws from postcolonial, decolonial, and poststructural theories, and aims to interrogate how the neocolonial foundations of aid interact with embodied intercultural relationships, in order to decolonize Western-African relations. Dr. Hanchey will be teaching courses such as Small Group Communication, Gender & Communication, and Difference & Communication.

The College of Liberal Arts at the University of Nevada, Reno, recently recognized Dr. Gwen Hullman for Extraordinary Service. This special Dean’s award recognized Dr. Hullman’s service to the university over the past 7 years, serving as Department Chair. Dr. Hullman has also been active on other university service commitments including Faculty Senate. Congratulations!

The Associated Students have recognized the Nevada Debate Union as the 2016-17 Outstanding Student Club of the Year. Coming on the heels of another solid year of performance by the UNR Debate Team and continued on-campus events and outreach, the award recognizes the clubs national accomplishments, community, engagement, and outstanding success. This is the second time the club has won this honor, the first being in 2014.
Director of Forensics (Debate) Phil Sharp was also recognized as the 2016-17 Outstanding Club Advisor of the Year for his contribution to the Nevada Debate Union’s operation and success. This is the second time he has been recognized.

Dr. Robert Gutierrez-Perez recently published “A Journey to El Mundo Zurdo: Queer Temporality, Queer of Color Cultural Heritages” in Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies (one of the main and highly competitive journals sponsored by the National Communication Association). Responding to the massacre at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, FL, this essay fuses scholarly writing with poetry and personal narrative to discuss queer temporality and the cultural inheritances of queer people of color. By connecting the events of Pulse nightclub with prior acts of violence against queer people of color, Gutierrez-Perez argues that the experiences and culture of queer people of color are a (post)colonial construct that is tentative, personal/political, and dangerous.

Gutierrez-Perez has continued this work and has also published in QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking as part of a special forum on queer autoethnography, “Bridging Performances of Auto/ethnography and Queer Bodies of Color to Advocacy and Civic Engagement.” In this piece, he argues that research by marginalized communities is often dangerous work as their performances of everyday life are often violently silenced, policed, and oppressed. Meaning that queer of color auto/ethnography is intimately connected to advocacy and civic engagement. Utilizing the trauma of the massacre at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida as a focal point, this poetic/research essay moves from the personal to the political and back to demand that the reader remember those lost during this horrific moment in history and to advocate for those still alive and fighting on the front lines of multiple battlegrounds for social justice.